


Spirit

by littlemachines



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, I guess????, Pre-Canon, Relationship Study, Yes I Know 4k Words Is A Lot For A Tumblr Prompt I Am Aware, it was a tumblr prompt for the dad reyes and son mccree dynamic so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-09
Updated: 2016-09-09
Packaged: 2018-08-14 03:17:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7996639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlemachines/pseuds/littlemachines
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p> Gabriel knew that they had made him command of Blackwatch because he didn’t mind putting the flame out even when it burnt his hands. They were scarred anyway.<br/>But this time it didn’t matter whether it hurt or not. Gabriel didn’t want the fire in Jesse McCree to go out.<br/></p>
</blockquote><br/>A little look at Gabriel's thoughts on the new recruit with the ridiculous cowboy hat.
            </blockquote>





	Spirit

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not kidding my good pal chelz requested '"don't be fucking rude" for dad reyes son mccree' from [this prompt post](http://akingdomorthis.tumblr.com/post/150085848701/ghostling-four-word-prompts-please-come) and i somehow totally misunderstood the concept of ask prompts and went over standard word count but it's chill it made me write after all  
> but ya i love their dynamic even though my interpretation of it is not 100% solidified but mostly i just want dad gabe to take care of his dumbass son mccree. i love my family  
> the lyrics are from run boy run by woodkid!  
> anyway!!! hope you enjoy!!!!  
> [tumblr](http://www.akingdomorthis.tumblr.com)  
> [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/reaperapologist)  
> 

* * *

_you’ll be a man, boy / but for now it’s time to run, it’s time to run!_

* * *

Gabriel Reyes was more of a patient man than people gave him credit for. From an outside perspective, it probably looked like anything but – and recent events supported such an observation. After all, he did just threaten to shoot Jack Morrison’s balls off next time the commander tried to call the shots on a specifically _Blackwatch_ mission (which, he thought, was a perfectly reasonable response but the withering look Ana threw at him suggested otherwise.) But he wouldn’t have ever made it the position of _leader_ had it not been for patience, though that wasn’t a compelling argument either given the fact his leadership was effectively taken away from him.

So maybe he wasn’t very patient at all. Or rather, he wasn’t one to bestow his good will on just _anybody_. If there was anything the military had taught him – besides from how snakes always had the nicest smiles – it was that you had to earn your place and then fight for it, blood and sweat but without the tears. No crying.

It made little sense, then, for Gabriel to be biting his tongue around the new kid.

When Gabriel had been offered a subdivision by the same people that had told him _you’re not suited to be commander for Overwatch any longer_ , organised in the dark and without the shiny stamp of UN approval as though it didn’t have their writing _all_ over it, he’d had a little hope for _Project Blackwatch_. Not much and certainly not because _they_ had said _you are needed elsewhere_ but it was something away from the glare of camera flashes and official press meetings, right?

Thinking back, Gabriel wanted to laugh, scoff at himself in the same breath he could warn himself, stop the hand that didn’t dot it’s _i_ ’s in his signature but did sign his soul away. Blackwatch wasn’t an honour. It was nothing more than a pacifier, chained to the UN as much as anything else, and he would be expected to recruit children. Kids from bad families, kids with no families, kids with only other kids as families because you couldn’t trust a grown up, not after everything you had seen. Victim kids and violent kids with one hand bruised and the other hand wet with blood that wasn’t their own. A whole playground of children, tearing up sandpits and snapping monkey bars. Kids that had the same mantra: _blood, sweat, no tears_. Kids that cried anyway because they were _kids_.

Jesse McCree looked like the type to cry easy. At first, that had been Gabriel’s excuse. He was waiting for waterworks, a breakdown that would embarrass them both but as time passed and the kid didn’t crack, Gabriel thought tears would be more preferable, anything better than a seventeen year old with distant, hallowed eyes and a robotically deadly aim. Gabriel wanted rain, a relief from a Californian drought (or more appropriately, the dry heat of Santa Fe.) Jesse looked like the kind of kid that cried at the drop of a hat but his own stayed firm on his head, stupidly easy to recognise as if he didn’t even _want_ to blend in. But he wasn’t talking and Gabriel wondered if it had been a mistake to not force something out of him in the interrogation room that Gabriel had been pushed into with the simple command of recruiting whoever was cuffed to the chair. He had not known, was given no warning to prepare him for when the door opened to the sight of a quick-witted teenager with eyes like fire, words like bullets and skin the colour of home sweet home.

Of course the fight in those eyes died, not when Gabriel had announced that the rest of the Deadlock gang had sold him out but when he added almost flippantly that it didn’t matter, they wouldn’t be a problem anymore anyway. It had been the right and wrong thing to say simultaneously. A shuttered gaze running through its option. Big brown eyes. Blink. Panic. Blink. Fear. Blink. Resignation. Blink, blink, blink, like a tap but not a drop of water was shed. Kids from bad families, kids with no families, kids with only other kids as families. Jesse McCree had been all three and now he would learn that you couldn’t trust a grown up, he was seeing it now. Gabriel had wanted a reaction and Jesse’s compliance. He hadn’t asked for eyes the colour of rich soil to look back at him like empty earth. _Eyes are the windows to the soul_.

It wasn’t as though Jesse was quiet upon his arrival to the Overwatch base Gabriel refused to call home. The kid was a mix of bad attitude and southern charm, drawling at nurses twice his age and spitting at the shoes of Commander Jack Morrison (and okay, maybe Gabriel had smiled a little at that, even if it got him a real bitching from Jack later.) Jesse’s spirit was stubborn. So there was no reason why weeks had passed and Gabriel hadn’t heard of any spectacular breakdown, no broken equipment, not a single guilty bystander. _Only broken men like you don’t cry, big boy_. The voice in his head became voices. A mix of people he loved and hated, sometimes both. But Jesse McCree was not yet broken, not if Gabriel could help it.

Gabriel and Jesse had run missions together, sparred together. Gabriel had hit Jesse where it would hurt, his pride, testing his ability to get up when he went down. Whining, bloody-nosed but determined to prove himself, Jesse didn’t cry when he got his ass beat either. Outside of these obligatory hours, Gabriel didn’t see much of the boy though he kept a close eye on the system that documented the where’s and when’s. Jesse spent a lot of time training, mostly with stimulations that had the body mass, speed and intelligence of Captain Gabriel Reyes, losing with consistently. It was flattering, in a way, to think that the kid had hope that he could one day beat Gabriel on the mat. At least he was trying.

But he wasn’t talking. Gabriel wasn’t much of a talker himself but with the kid effectively dodging any psych evaluations as fast as he avoided bullets and Jack breathing down Gabriel’s neck about the fragility of Blackwatch, questions on Gabriel’s ability to act as leader were getting to him, if only a little. Maybe he didn’t like the way Jesse hung in the balance, tipping between wanting to live and wanting to not, reckless and suicidal. Maybe it was the thought of home, of his mother who would have taken one look at Jesse McCree and taken him in like a stray dog, acting as though a bath and a hot meal would be enough but it was always Gabriel who had knelt down beside those frightened dogs, hand out. _Reach out to them and they will come to you, Gabi_. And she had been right then, laughing at the doorway as a scruffy street dog laid back in the narrow hallway to let Gabriel rub its tummy. Blackwatch had given Jesse a second chance, Overwatch had given him a place to stay and now it was up to Gabriel to give the kid a hand.

Gabriel wasn’t like Jack Morrison. He didn’t organise playdates for his peers and expect his recruits to have awkwardly timed heart-to-hearts. Blackwatch was a special-ops team, expected to be in an out, nice and quick. _Like a bandaid?_ Jesse had asked when he was being drilled on what was expected of him on missions. Gabriel had deadpanned: _no, like a papercut_. They didn’t have time to hold hands and sing Kumbaya. And yet.

Blackwatch was required for a simple intel mission in Santa Fe and Gabriel hadn’t even blinked before accepting. Jack had stopped him before he left the boardroom, pressing against him to murmur low in his ear that this was a bad idea, it had only been a few months since the kid had joined them, taking him back to his city could easily turn sour.

“Like the taste in my mouth, huh?” Gabriel said, lips turning upwards.

Jack gave him a measured look, the way he always did when they talked now, searching Gabriel’s expression to see how much he could push and how much he could pull. The measurements lessened with every passing day. Gabriel definitely had little patience for Jack.

“You realise you risk losing him to his home,” Jack said eventually.

“A whole load of noble concern from the man who sent the order to recruit the kid in the first place.” Gabriel cut to the chase, stood close enough to Jack that he could see every conflict, every war waged in those pretty blue eyes and what the history books would forget was how Jack would do anything to win. “I can handle my soldiers. You handle yours. After all, you have far more.”

Jack stared at him a moment longer before the proximity became too much and he stepped back. Gabriel’s smile widened, unkind. Today was the kind of day that Jack Morrison didn’t have the patience for Gabriel Reyes either. He let Gabriel leave, put on his gear, grab a cowboy kid with a stick in his mouth and a gun too big for him in his holster. Gabriel spat on the ground before boarding the jet. It took off, the bay doors taking their sweet time to close so Gabriel was forced to stare back at Jack, too far for Gabriel to see those eyes and understand what the hell was going through that head of his. The bitter taste in his mouth was still there.

The mission was so simple, it was boring. Gabriel almost _wished_ Jesse would act out of turn but he was as obedient as he always was (which was enough to get the job done.) He acted with his usual mock cheer, though he pouted when Gabriel told him to avoid using his gun if he didn’t want to alert the whole building of his arrival. The kid muttered something under his breath but complied. Santa Fe, like most capital cities, was in the process of rebuilding, distracted by its own heartbreak for long enough that the two of them could slip into the research lab without too much tussle. Gabriel had Jesse stationed as lookout outside as he ransacked their offices, trying not to break keyboards when the encryption proved difficult. He let the prescribed Blackwatch technology do most of the work but it was costing them time and every so often, he could hear the sound of scuffling as Jesse took down another wandering worker, louder if it was a trained guard. He didn’t seem to be struggling all that much. Their sparring sessions, as uninformative as they were, seemed to be working. Gabriel could smile about that at least.

Jesse had rendered five guys unconscious by the time the data had transferred. Gabriel pocketed the disk and whistled low, like calling a dog to attention. Jesse elbowed the door open, popping his head around it. “All done?”

Gabriel nodded an affirmative and Jesse let himself in. Gabriel watched, without a word, as the kid lumbered over to the window, peering through half shuttered blinds. It caused awkward shadows on his face. He squinted against the sunlight but Gabriel couldn’t see his eyes. That was always a problem.

Sighing, Gabriel moved to stand beside him, partly to do an exit check himself but really, he knew they could get out easier than they got in, practically stroll out if they wanted to. But from this position he could see Jesse’s eyes a little better and he knew he wasn’t looking at the roads below and he wouldn’t want to take advantage of the city like that. Good kid.

Eyes still distant, he finally spoke. “Ya hopin’ to have a talk with me in the city I called home, boss? _Mano a mano_?”

“Cut the crap, _bobo_.” It had less bite in it than normal but he didn’t think Jesse would notice anyway. “This isn’t your home.”

Jesse stilled with surprise he couldn’t quite mask and then lowered his head as he laughed quietly. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. I lived on highways. The city life was a pipedream.”

Jesse had admitted similar things (not easily) when answering questions for the sake of data but this was the first time he had said something for the sake of itself, guns in their holsters and sunlight in their eyes.

“Didn’t think of you as much of a dreamer,” Gabriel said mildly.

“ _Was_ ,” Jesse emphasised. “I thought movin’ to the city would solve all my problems an’ the best way to do that was a gang. There’s plenty of ‘em around these parts- or, well, there used to be.”

Jesse wasn’t looking at him and Gabriel realised that it wasn’t tears that should frighten him but the _questions_. A quiet voice. For _Jesse_ , at least. “You really catch all of ‘em?”

Gabriel didn’t answer for a moment, staring at the side of the kid’s profile, waiting for him to break. He didn’t. He was surprisingly enduring. Gabriel had been a tough commander – it had been what had made him a _good_ leader or so he had thought – but it was surprising to realise that he didn’t really want to break Jesse McCree. Finally, he said, “Yeah. We got ‘em all.”

He still wasn’t looking at Gabriel. “And what’d you do to ‘em?”

There was a right answer. _It’s classified. It doesn’t matter. You really think you can help them now?_ Gabriel knew that they had made him command of Blackwatch because he didn’t mind putting the flame out even when it burnt his hands. They were scarred anyway.

But this time it didn’t matter whether it hurt or not. Gabriel didn’t want the fire in Jesse McCree to go out.

The good choice was not always the right one. The right choice was not always the good one. “I don’t know.”

Finally, Jesse looked at him and his eyes were narrowed like he was looking at the sun. Hope was as powerful as it was suspicious and fragile. “Blackwatch was barely a signed contract. I was given a mission and I was obliged to carry it out, nothing more, nothing less. I caught all your friends but what happened from there wasn’t in my hands.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Jesse didn’t say anything, just turned back towards the window. His head was ducked and he lifted a hand to rub at the back of his neck. Maybe he would cry after all.

Gabriel closed his eyes. He heard his mother’s voice. He sighed and opened them. “No one in Overwatch is interested in the runts of the litter. You’re the youngest we counted and that’s ‘cause your bastard friends turned you in so you’d take the fall for the rest of ‘em.”

When Jesse looked at him now, his eyes were wide. “But you- you said you caught ‘em all.”

Gabriel _tsk_ ed. “ _I_ did. What kinda gang employs brats not even out of puberty to do weapon dealings?”

Jesse shrugged and smiled. “Same kinda folks that employs them to save the world, I suppose.”

Gabriel had no answer to that. They stood for a good minute as if they were simply enjoying the view even though most of it was interrupted by the lines of blinds. The air didn’t feel so different. Gabriel didn’t think this conversation would change much. Maybe it had been the wrong thing to say, to tell the boy that the boys like him were still out there, okay, doing what they used to do, slinging back cheap beer and riding busted up motorbikes up and down the highway. Jesse knew that the deal offered to him hadn’t been a fair one. Now he _knew_ that his gang was still out there – scattered and young but _familiar_ and _alive_ nonetheless – there was nothing stopping him from turning on Gabriel.

Maybe, Gabriel thought idly, that was why he was trying so hard so hard to beat Gabriel on the mat. Not pride or dominance but survival, motivated by hope that was a flickering flame growing stronger by the second.

 _Reach out to them and they will come to you_. “You think I wanted some runny-nosed kids as part of my special ops squad?”

Jesse blinked. “Is that a trick question?”

“It’s rhetorical,” Gabriel said flatly. “I walked into that interrogation room seven months ago and almost walked straight back out. Had no idea that the sharpshooter was a fuckin’ toddler in a cowboy hat.”

Jesse frowned, something about this confusing him. “So, what? Good ol’ Commander Morrison made the call?”

“Probably,” Gabriel snorted. “He calls the shots.”

“He didn’t used to.” When Gabriel simply stared blankly at Jesse, the kid shrugged. “What? You think no one knows who you are?”

“That’s exactly what I think.”

“You saved the world.” Jesse said it as if it was the universal answer.

“And what’ve I got to show for it, huh?” Gabriel scoffed, looking away again. “You wanna talk heroism with anyone, go bother Morrison.”

“I’ll pass.” Jesse leant against the windowsill, elbows on it and grin positively shit-eating. “No offence, boss, but all he’s got to show for savin’ the world is a declining hairline.”

Gabriel levelled him with a hard look and thought that his mother forgot that untrained dogs would piss on the very hand they licked. “Don’t be fucking rude.”

Jesse laughed. “Yeah, yeah, okay, _Dad_.” Another moment of silence passed but the atmosphere was waiting for a punchline. Jesse delivered with his usual cheery demeanour. “You defensive ‘cause you like kissin’ that big ol’ forehead of his or somethin’?”

“I shoulda left you to rot in jail.”

“But you didn’t!” Jesse tilted his head, a hand on the top of his head to keep it there. His hair was getting a little too long. Gabriel had another idle thought but this one was a reminder to himself to hound the kid about a haircut soon or threaten to get some scissors himself. Maybe a knife. “Why the hell didn’t you?”

Damn questions. Gabriel gave the back of Jesse’s head a thump with the bottom of his palm and the hat slumped forward, like a child playing dress-up which he supposed Jesse was. “You even listen to a word I say, _bobo_?” At Jesse’s protest and ducking motion, hat clutched to his chest like something precious, Gabriel retracted his hand and said, less harshly, “Like I said, it wasn’t my choice to recruit you. Go thank Morrison.”

“Nah.” Jesse tilted his head back, surveying the ceiling, an uninteresting affair. Gabriel looked out of the window, at what Jesse was missing. This particular area was bare of people but plentiful of remains, metals and bricks and souls. Gabriel had become familiar with death and he knew that many had lost their lives here. It was a desolate city full of only dead dreams. It was neither the past to Jesse nor was it a future. “You coulda left me to rot, like you said, but you didn’t. You aren’t, even.”

They didn’t look at each other. Gabriel realised that it wasn’t that Jesse wasn’t a talker but he was still learning, babbling, clumsy with letters, rolling them off his tongue as if unsure about the sound, the language, the meaning. “Blackwatch is _your_ gig and _this_ ” – he gestured between them, at how the setting sun cast shadows and light on them both – “was _your_ call, boss.” When he laughed, he closed his eyes. Then he opened them to look back at Gabriel. “I suppose this is startin’ to sound a helluva lot like a thank you now, isn’t it?”

Jesse was, all at once, young and old. The corner of his eyes crinkled like he had, despite the odds, laughed often but those eyes were young. In the rich brown, flowers grew, a testimony to his spirit. His soul was like the sun outside, like a city that would, with time, rebuild itself out of the scraps, making the best out of what it was given.

 _You are needed elsewhere_. Jesse was more perceptive than anyone, Gabriel included, would give him credit for. A sharpshooter’s eye, even young, was trained to read between the lines, see between the gaps in between the blinds at a city slowly coming back to live outside. Gabriel _had_ almost walked out of the interrogation room but he had also took one look at a seventeen year old who would have otherwise spent years in a prison cell, waiting for the big boys he secretly called _family_ to bust him out only for them to never show. And damn if Gabriel didn’t recognise that taste in his mouth and how he had come to call it _betrayal_.

Jesse’s eyes said he knew why Gabriel had stayed in the interrogation room. He knew that Gabriel saw something more than what was expected of Blackwatch. No papercuts, no band aids. Scars, fresh but healed. They weren’t kids anymore. Not after everything they had seen. They couldn’t be.

Gabriel was never good with compliments. His voice came out gruff with awkwardness. “Yeah, well. Don’t make me regret it.”

Jesse put his hat back on his head and tipped it. “Wouldn’t dream of it, boss.”

Gabriel had considered giving him another whack over the back of his head for good measure but then he stilled, heightened senses picking up a sound. Footsteps trying to be quiet. Too many of them to be disorganised. He looked at Jesse who was blissfully ignorant until he realised that Gabriel was staring at him with a twitch in his jaw. Slowly, Gabriel said, “You said you’d taken them all out.”

“Hey, now.” Jesse raised his palms. Adrenaline was already thrumming through Gabriel’s body and he could even _hear_ Jesse gulp. “There’s only so much a man can do with two hands.”

Gabriel growled as he heard their visitors quicken their approach. “I’m regretting it. Get your gun, recruit.”

Jesse grinned. “About time.”

Gabriel considered dangling Jesse from the window by his boot.

Jack wasn’t going to appreciate how they had got themselves caught in direct engagement but then the door bust open and Jesse took down a guy in a shot with a light in his eyes that was no longer the sun. There was that fire. In a fight, the flowers burned and with every bullet came an explosion.

They were a half-decent team, like a man with his loyal mutt. Gabriel realised, in the heat of it, that maybe Jesse didn’t want to go back to a life of being the middle man, of only shooting darts. He was no longer a dreamer but damn if his spirit didn’t seek out fights bigger than that cowboy hat clad head of his.

By the time they were done, the stupid cowboy hat was _still_ on his head. That was definitely testing Gabriel’s patience.

*

“Why are you crying?”

Jack and Gabriel had stopped arguing at the sound, both of them recognising the childish lilt of Fareeha. After sharing a brief look, they followed the sound of her voice to the spare room on base that Ana had made Fareeha’s, the door ajar. It was dark, the figures sat on the couch in it illuminated by the screen that was rolling the credits of a movie with a song that could only belong in a children’s movie. Neither noticed Gabriel and Jack at the door.

A cowboy hat too big for her on her head, surely uncomfortably obscuring half her vision, Fareeha was kneeling beside one of Gabriel’s most capable Blackwatch agents. The hand that wasn’t holding Fareeha’s was pressed back against his eyes dramatically, making his identity almost indistinguishable. Almost. Gabriel knew the fool damn well.

“I’m sorry,” Jesse said, between hiccups. He sniffed loudly. “It was just so- I’m so happy they got to go back to all the other horses, that’s all. It was really beautiful.”

“Then stop crying!” Fareeha demanded, cheeks puffed up as she stared at Jesse in childish confusion.

“Hey now, little lady, don’t beat a sleeping dog,” he said weakly.

Fareeha frowned. “Isn’t the phrase ‘dead horse?’”

Jesse’s voice raised a few decimals. “I was trying to be _sensitive_.”

Jack nudged Gabriel, mouth close to his ear. “Should I get Ana?”

Gabriel gave a crying Jesse McCree one more withering look before saying, “God, yes.”

**Author's Note:**

> (a very lonely) translation:  
> bobo (fool)  
> also bonus points if you can guess the movie lmao


End file.
